Choices, not chance: Why China is rich and Nigeria is poor, by Dakuku Peterside

China and Nigeria, two continental giants that entered the late 1970s with similar per capita incomes, have since taken opposite economic trajectories. In China, the decisive moment was Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 decision to “open the windows” and let the world’s capital know-how to blow in. In Nigeria, the same decade ushered in the oil boom that encouraged governments to depend on volatile export rents rather than the hard grind of production.
Nearly half a century late